Ethos: The Practical Ethics Blog

A short note to say that as of this Fall, I am joining Williams College as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies. Williams is a terrific liberal arts college located in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. I could not be happier with this wonderful opportunity.

I hope you will keep in touch. My email and other contact information will remain the same, as will the Practical Ethics website (www.practicalethics.net) and Ethos blog (www.practicalethics.net/blog/).

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Aug.01.2008 :: Environmental Studies, Ethics, Geography, Global Studies, Human-Animal Studies :: Comments Off

The Spanish parliament’s decision to extend certain political rights to great apes is sparking a renewed debated about the meaning of a mixed community of people, animals and nature.

You can read more about the decision at Reuters.

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Jun.27.2008 :: Environmental Studies, Ethics, Geography, Global Studies, Human-Animal Studies, Wildlife :: 1 Comment »

Last week I participated in a live broadcast that focused on the ethics and politics of killing some animals for the benefit of others.

For example, should we kill sea lions to save salmon, coyotes to protect sheep, wolves to safeguard cattle, or cats to preserve song-birds? These are the kinds of questions we addressed.

Hosted by Emily Harris and David Miller, ‘Playing God?’ was an episode of Think Out Loud, a fascinating programme of Oregon Public Broadcasting.

You can visit the ‘Playing God?‘ webpage to listen to the show, as well as add your comments to the interactive blog.

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Jun.26.2008 :: Environmental Studies, Ethics, Geography, Global Studies, Human-Animal Studies, Wildlife, Wolves :: Comments Off

Have you ever paged (or surfed) through the New York Times and noticed the variety of news stories involving animals? Once you start to notice, it is hard to stop. Indeed, there are moments when I think I could build a career commenting on just these stories!

For instance, over the last several days the New York Times printed a number of stories where animals are a central conccern. The international section reported Korean protests (and broader Asian concerns) over the safety of US beef, and the associated politics of industrial agriculture and animal welfare. Ironically, there is also a dining column with advice on how to cut back one’s use of meat, and cook a more vegetable based (and healthier) diet. If we turn to the Science section, we find that Horseshoe crabs are in decline, and Fisher’s are reinhabiting American suburbs. This does not even begin to touch the steady flow of news articles on global warming and its impact on endangered species, migrating birds, etc. Finally, the editorial page features an essay about the recently adopted national bird of Israel. The Hoopoe, as it turns out, is a creature long associated with cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue. If there was ever a time to thinking about the political and cultural symbolism of animals, this would be one of them.

To be sure, these and other stories focus on human concerns — agricultural, economic, gastronomic, environmental, political, etc. And the focus on animals is sometimes inadvertent (they are props in the story) and frequently speciesist — the only moral beings who count are human. Even so, the presence of wild and domestic animals in our everyday life and discourse is ever present.

Watch for it!

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Jun.12.2008 :: Environmental Studies, Ethics, Geography, Global Studies, Human-Animal Studies :: Comments Off

When I started Ethos, I made a decision to avoid rapid-fire blogging in immediate response to current events. I wanted a substantive blog of columns that were both reflective and critically engaged with matters of practical ethics.

Yet I find myself routinely forwarding newspaper articles to my students and colleagues. Generally I draw from national and global newspapers, podcasts, and streaming media, e.g. the New York Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, National Public Radio, and the Canadian Broadcast Service.

For my students, these articles are a gateway to connecting the theoretical and methodological knowledge they learn in class, and the insights this knowledge brings to one’s understanding of the empirical world. For my colleagues, they are a way we keep in touch, and receive ‘heads-up’ about events and information in our sphere’s of concern.

So beginning this summer, I’ve decided to experiment with sending a subset of these articles to Ethos as well, believing they may be of interest to a wider community interested in the ethical and policy dimensions of environmental studies, human-animal studies, and global studies.

Let me know what you think, whether you find these informational posts to be a complement or distraction to the substantive columns and editorials we usually publish.

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Mar.28.2008 :: Art, Environmental Studies, Ethics, Geography, Human-Animal Studies, Politics, Religion :: No Comments »

A scandal has arisen in China in which one of the winners of CCTV’s Top 10 News Photos of the Year (2007) has recently admitted to photo-shopping his picture. The artist, Liu Weiqiang, is a well-established and respected photographer who (before this incident) was the assistant director of photography at the Daqing Evening News.

Weiqiang’s winning photo is of the newly constructed Qinghai-Tibet Railway, a structure that has been marred in controversy over its potential impact on the migration patterns of the Tibetan antelope. In the artist’s photo (above), a pack of antelope is shown ambling beneath the behemoth structure, apparently unaware or unafraid of the train passing above.

The photo came under intense scrutiny when numerous bloggers noticed inconsistencies in the image. The photographer, who originally claimed to camp out for 8 days waiting for the perfect shot, has now admitted that he photo-shopped two separate photos to create the award-winning image. At first he defended the image claiming that it was not intended as a news photo. It was originally used as the poster image for the Kekexili nature preservation area with the intent, he claimed, of helping the antelope. Since the uproar, however, Weiqiang admitted his wrongdoing and resigned from his post at the Daqing Evening News.

The artist’s reasoning for falsifying the image remains unclear. However, protests and concern over the train’s impact on the environment perhaps created a need for propaganda material to dispel public outcry. At the very least, it can be said that the doctored image was born out of a divisive situation between environmentalists and urban expansionists. There was a need to prove, in some capacity, that human encroachment on this territory does not impact the existing flora and fauna. Before the photo was revealed as a fake, it certainly made an impression on the public. As Weiqiang said on the evening he accepted his award, “I want to be able to capture the harmony among the Tibetan antelopes, the train, men and nature on July 1, 2006. I want to express through this photograph that the earth belongs to everybody. Everybody wants to see harmony among men and animals.” Now, however, it is hard to say how this incident will influence debates over the harmony between the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the Tibetan antelope.

Meanwhile, Weiqiang’s photo has been stripped of its winning title, and the impact of the structure on the antelope population remains unclear.

Sources and further reading:

Chinese Editor Resigns over Fake Tibet Photo (Yahoo)

Photoshop Helps Photographer Win Award (China Economic Review)

Interview Transcripts with Weiqiang (Shanghaiist)

Lisa Brown :: Mar.12.2008 :: Art, Environmental Studies, Geography, Politics :: No Comments »

Here is another feast for the eyes that I am late on. J Henry Fair’s photographs of industial scars combines both politics and art. This photo spread from his work is entitled Visions of Excess and appears in the August 2007 edition of Harpers Magazine. You can see more of his work in the Practical Ethics Gallery and at www.industrialscars.com.

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Nov.19.2007 :: Art, Environmental Studies, Geography :: No Comments »

I apologize for being a bit late on this, but I have been traveling.

Robert Hite is an amazing artists and I encourage you to see his work live if you can. If you can’t physically get there, you can view more of his art in the Practical Ethics Gallery or at his own roberthite.com.

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Nov.16.2007 :: Art, Environmental Studies, Geography :: No Comments »

It is a real pleasure to join the Practical Ethics blog, and to be part of a community delving into myriad human-animal relationships.

I would like to invite those of you familiar with geography to attend the 2008 AAG meeting in Boston, and to consider submitting a paper for our session on Animal Geographies. We will have sponsorship from the Ethics, Justice, and Human Rights specialty group and Practical Ethics. Please see the CFP below for guidelines and contact information.

For those unfamiliar with the growing research into animal geographies, I would like to take a moment to provide an overview of this developing disciplinary area. Geographers have always had as one of their main focal interests a curiosity about how humans interact with the natural world - what constitutes these interactions, how they vary across time and space, and how specific interactions are contested within societies. The interactions between humans and nonhumans are one huge piece of this puzzle, and over the past ten years geographers have produced a significant body of literature on animal geographies. Examining human-animal relationships in agriculture, the ‘wild’, captive and companion situations, researchers have questioned where and how boundaries between humans and animals have been defined (e.g., research laboratory), how specific places and cultures have shaped interactions (e.g., the connections between heritage livestock breeds and local identities/economies), and the relationship between ethics and animal subjectivities (e.g., what constitutes ethical practices towards nonhumans, how does that vary from place to place, how can the animal as subject be ‘heard’?). Two excellent places to start looking into what animal geography has to offer are: Animal Geographies edited by Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel and Animal Spaces, Beastly Spaces edited by Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert. I would be happy to provide additional citations to anyone who is interested.

AAG 2008 Call for Papers on Animal Geographies: Current and Future Research Trajectories

As interest in human-animal studies continues to develop within geography, researchers are moving in a variety of novel directions. We are soliciting papers for a session (or sessions) on current research in animal geographies for the 2008 AAG meeting April 15-19 in Boston. Papers may be from any geographic perspective and may address topics such as (but not limited to) technologies, law and policy, ethics, historical geographies, social theory, agriculture, methodologies, animal subjectivities, and human-animal boundary making.

Constraints of the AAG meeting format: Please note that in order to participate in this AAG session, you will have to first register for the conference on the website to obtain a PIN number and then you will need to submit your abstract and PIN number to us and we will formally submit the session. The deadline for session submissions is October 31, 2007. To that end, we ask all interested participants to register and submit their materials to us by October 1st so that we have adequate time to prepare the submission.

Please submit your materials and/or questions to

Julie Urbanik, Ph.D., julie.urbanik@gmail.com, and
Kristin Stewart, Ph.D., kristinlstewart@yahoo.com.

William Lynn :: Sep.08.2007 :: Environmental Studies, Ethics, Geography, Human-Animal Studies :: No Comments »

This month is an embarrassment of riches! Once again I have the pleasure of introducing a contributing author to this Blog and an Advisor on Practical Ethics, Julie Urbanik.

Julie holds an M.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona (2000), and a Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University (2006). Her thesis, Living Our Environment: the Role of Ecofeminism in Women’s Studies Curriculums, was an exploration of why and how environmental issues such as the politics of spirituality, environmental economic policies, and post-colonial and animal rights theories need to become better integrated into Women’s Studies classrooms. Her dissertation, Geography and Animal Biotechnology: the Role of Place and Scale in Shaping the Public Debate, examined stakeholder strategies in the conflict over the production and use of genetically engineered animals and engaged with questions about science and democracy, geography and activism, and the intersections of power, species, and identity.

As an ecofeminist cultural geographer, she is motivated to explore how issues of identity, globalization, and technology are reconfiguring human relationships with the natural world. She has experience and interest in three broad research areas: the role of identity politics and social theory in environmental conflicts, the role of geography in science and technology policy conflicts, and the geopolitics of commodities. More specifically, she focuses on the topics of gender, nonhumans, and food technologies. The aim of her research is to contribute both to the academic dialogue on shifting nature-society interactions and to the furthering of effective participatory democracy in environmentally-related policy decisions.

As an educator, her goal is to impress upon students her love of learning and of our world. She wants to challenge students to disrupt notions of what is ’normal’ and to consider the social and historical constructions of their own experiences, beliefs, and daily practices. She introduces human-animal ’issues’ in every course she teaches, and relishes motivating students to experience light bulb moments.

You can contact her at:

Julie Urbanik, PhD
Assistant Professor
Geography and Regional Planning
Westfield State University
Westfield, MA 01086
413.367.3028
julie.urbanik@gmail.com

Selected Publications:

Urbanik, J. (in press). Locating the transgenic landscape: animal biotechnology and the Politics of place in Massachusetts. Geoforum.

Emel, J. and J. Urbanik. 2005. Feminism and animal biotechnology. In A Companion to Feminist Geography, edited by J. Seager and L. Nelson. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 445-457.

Urbanik, J. 2005. Brave new zoo: the world of animal biotechnology. New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) Update, v.6, n.2, pp. 4-5.

Urbanik, J. 2001. Book review of Feminism & Ecology by Mary Mellor. Organization & Environment, v. 14, n.1, pp. 116-117.

Urbanik, J. 2000. Book review of The Emperor’s Embrace by Jeffrey Masson. Feminists for Animal Rights Journal, v. 12, n. 3/4, Autumn/Winter.

Urbanik, J. 1999. CARE re-visioned: an update on the Companion Animal Rescue Effort Program. Feminists for Animal Rights Journal, v. 11, n. 1/2, Winter/Spring.

William Lynn :: Aug.26.2007 :: Ethics, Geography, Human-Animal Studies :: No Comments »

Los Angeles has the biggest homeless population of any U.S. city today and spends proportionally less on the problem than New York, Boston, Chicago and Seattle. There are more than 90,000 homeless people countywide on any given night. According to a petition signed by 54 prominent university researchers from southern California, and a companion research report from the Inter-University Coalition Against Homelessness, current approaches to ending homelessness will not solve the problem. Policy makers, service providers, and communities need to move away from attempts to contain the problem in neighborhoods like Skid Row and encourage broader community responsibility. In addition, added affordable and supportive housing, job opportunities, and services are critical. The petition and report are available on-line at www.usc.edu/sustainablecities.

Jennifer Wolch is a distinguished geographer at the University of Southern California (USC), and Director of the Center for Sustainable Cities at USC. The CSC is an admirable venture, and Dr. Wolch’s work evinces are deep care for the human and non-human world. A wonderful example of interdisciplinarity in human-animal studies. To find out more about the Center and its work, visit www.usc.edu/sustainablecities.

cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: Feb.06.2007 :: Ethics, Geography, Human-Animal Studies, Politics :: No Comments »